Already we have spoken of the orientation of graves, and the degradation of the barrow to the grave-mound. Several kindred matters must now receive attention, and in a later chapter, when chariot-burial is considered, our eyes will again be turned backward. For customs are like crystals with several facets; to get a true perception we must, in each case, frequently change our point of view. A few more instances of the development of funeral monuments may be first noted. It has been shown elsewhere that the churchyard headstone may be traced back, step by step, to the unhewn menhir set up by primitive man on some bleak moorland. Within the last two or three years, there have been discovered in France and Italy remarkable connecting links, in the so-called “statue-menhirs,” prehistoric stones rudely carved [Illustration: FIG. 53. Inscribed, ornamented, round-headed cross, Sancreed churchyard, Cornwall. In the head of the cross is a figure of Our Lord in relief. The shaft is decorated with interlaced work, and contains a panel with an imperfect inscription. ] to represent the human head and trunk[658]. The evidence derived from observing the gradual evolution is corroborated by strange cases of survival. Thus in St Martha’s churchyard, near Chilworth, Surrey, low headstones, untouched by any tool, have been set up in considerable numbers. The slabs are merely masses of ironstone dug out of the Lower Greensand of the hill on which the church is built. Pursuing another line of descent, Mr J. Romilly Allen claimed that a similar kind of coarse monolith had developed into the “wheel-cross” and the “free-standing” cross of Christian churchyards[659] (Fig. 53 and Fig. 62). The dolmen, or “stone-table,” a familiar prehistoric monument, has been replaced by the family vault and the altar-tomb, the ossuary of Brittany, the flat tombstone of the village graveyard, and the sarcophagus of the cathedral[660]. The cromlech, a circle of upright stone pillars, is by some believed to have been the forerunner of the temple and the round church[661]; but this claim may be waived, as not fully proven (cf. p. 99 _supra_). More plausible is the theory that the rude, unfashioned grave-stake is represented to-day by the humble wooden cross of our cemeteries[662]. Each of these examples of unconscious imitation and modern survival might be examined at some length, but the theories which they illustrate are now so familiar as to be commonplace. Not quite so well known is the theory that we have derived our custom of placing shrubs on graves from our heathen forefathers of the Bronze Age, who were wont to plant trees on their burial mounds[663]. Mr Grant Allen argued, with some reason, that the pine-trees so frequently found on round barrows in the South of England are survivors of those placed there by the first mound-raisers, since the Scottish pine is not now indigenous to that tract of country[664] (cf. p. 401 _infra_).